“Spindletop Viewing Her Gusher” Painting by Aaron Arion

Mystery surrounds Miss Rita’s early life. Raised in a prosperous, but unnamed Oregon family in the early 1900s, she left home to dance for a time with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo before she joined the vaudeville circuit. During her first, brief marriage, it’s unclear why she became a prostitute.

When the Great Depression forced the decline of vaudeville theatres, Miss Rita arrived in Beaumont, the oil city enjoying its second petroleum boom. She probably knew about the vast wealth in the southeast Texas city from her tours on the vaudeville circuit and from Beaumont’s fame as the locale of Spindletop, the first big oil gusher in 1901 that led to the creation of industry giants like Gulf and Texaco.

Miss Rita rented facilities for her trade from Charles Ainsworth, but soon took a liking to his son Nathaniel. The couple married and Miss Rita took early retirement. After several years of financially establishing themselves in Beaumont, Rita and Nathaniel purchased Beaumont’s Shamrock Hotel.

After Nathaniel died in 1946, Miss Rita sold the Shamrock, and purchased the Dixie Hotel in Beaumont’s thriving red light district. She tastefully decorated the Dixie and employed a group of attractive, well-mannered women. Word spread quickly about her discreet, first-rate establishment. Some reports claim private entrances allowed customers to arrive undetected.

Despite ample competition, business thrived at the Dixie and Miss Rita used her increasing wealth and business sense to make large investments in local real estate. She became known in the community for her generosity, funding little-league teams, supporting churches, and sending a priest through seminary. Some accounts say the police contacted her when people needed financial help after an accident or some other misfortune. Miss Rita set aside the third floor of the Dixie for old men who had no place to live. While cheap local hotels charged a dollar a night, Miss Rita charged the men only seven dollars a month, which included their meals.

Finally in 1961, vice and corruption in the red light district reached such a level that a five-man committee conducted three-day televised hearings exposing the sale of liquor to minors, narcotics trafficking, and payoffs to city officials as well as prostitution. The Dixie closed with all the other facilities.

An IRS investigation resulted in a $100,000 tax bill, forcing Miss Rita to sell all her property except her home and the Dixie. Apparently she continued her prostitution business out of her home until 1976 when failing health forced her to sell the Dixie to the Gulf Sates Utilities Company who donated it to the Beaumont Heritage Society.

The philanthropic madam moved to Houston to live with her daughter and died in 1978. Miss Rita’s position in Beaumont’s life earned her a spot in a pictorial history of Beaumont. The attached painting “Spindletop Viewing Her Gusher,” by Aaron Arion, belongs to Beaumont’s Tyrell Historical Library.Mi